There is quite a bit of talk today about the need to have empowered employees within the workplace. Unfortunately that is often all it is – talk! But what are the benefits and how do you accomplish such a task? Let’s start by discussing the benefits of having more empowered team members. Business environments change so rapidly today. There is a need to develop more empowered employees in order to keep up with today‘s fast-paced fluctuating global environment. In order for organizations to remain adaptable to customer needs, front-line employees must be given more authority and flexibility to make on-the-spot decisions. Research in the area of empowerment has revealed that increased empowerment produces greater organisational success factors. These factors include employee contribution, innovation, organizational commitment, expands latent talents, increases capacity to accept change, and increases employee retention. These benefits are all necessary traits for improving organisational success. Having discussed some benefits and hence the desirability for greater empowerment let’s investigate what we mean by the term ‘empowerment’. There seems to be a plethora of definitions but for me the best way to discuss empowerment is to break it up into two dimensions. Hence, empowerment can be summed up by looking at both its internal and external aspects. The technical definitions that describes these two aspects are psychological empowerment (internal) and leader-empowering behaviours (external). Psychological empowerment is made up of four facets, a sense of real meaning in one’s work, a sense of making an impact through the contribution you make
Senior Leadership
Emotional Intelligence – How to develop it!
Emotional Intelligence (EI) – that is, the capacity to work effectively with your and others’ emotions while engaging in human interactions. EI is demonstrating itself to be a critical factor in leadership effectiveness. Increased numbers of empirical research studies are being produced that reveal outcomes that can no longer be ignored by serious leaders. Some of the key measures associated with emotional intelligence that are being examined are job satisfaction levels, job effectiveness, the contagiousness of moods and physiological responses to others (heart rate, health). Studies show that the emotional intelligence of the boss directly affects employee job satisfaction levels, and this in turn impacts upon employee turnover. Furthermore when a boss brings a negative mood to the workplace through displays of irritability, and anxiety it takes away from a climate of enthusiasm, which diminishes work effectiveness. In contrast, when a boss is able to exude an optimistic and enthusiastic mood it impacts positively upon innovation, productivity, team work and increased resilience to difficult circumstances. With a greater number of research studies demonstrating the positive impact that increased emotional intelligence has upon business results, it is becoming more difficult to ignore this element of leadership development. The good news is that leaders can improve and grow in this area. I have worked one-to-one with leaders to achieve this very thing. So where do you start to work at improving this area? There are a number of options available to you. You might want to look at taking an assessment to
Trust Building: How do you do it!
There are a number of crucial elements required to create high performing teams. I have worked with many different types of teams in different contexts over the past 25 years and have picked up a few strategies that might help. The foundational element needed to create an effective team is that often elusive characteristic of TRUST! Despite what people say trust is earned. But don’t look at this as an obstacle – “Just go out and earn it!” There are some fundamental steps to take in order to earn trust. One key is to take the time to understand your team member’s perspectives on trust. It helps to understand that there are four main characteristics of trust, and people tend to have a more dominant focus on one or two of these characteristics. The four main traits of trust are reliability (do what you said you would when you said you would), openness (being transparent to feel free to share information and opinions with team members), acceptance (that I know if I share something about our work, no matter how negative it might be, that I as a person am respected and safe from personal attack) and directness (not brutal bluntness, but feeling free to directly give and receive helpful feedback) (Dr. Ralph Colby). Inevitably, we all tend to view others through our own interpretive filters, thus if a team member (or team leader for that matter) highly values reliability and another in the team esteems acceptance it can cause a value conflict, undermining team trust.
12